


The Pianist and The Nazi

by Nakimochiku



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 06:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham, a pianist before world war two, hides out in a house where he is assisted by a Nazi officer</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pianist and The Nazi

**Author's Note:**

> For the Hannibal Kinkmeme.

Some nights Will dreams of Alana. He dreams of her as he last saw her; shoved roughly into the car of an airless freight train, screaming at him. He thinks she might have been telling him to get away, to go and to leave her. In his dreams though, her screams turn into shrieks of blame. She doesn’t want him to leave her, not alone, not like this.

He wakes from dreams of Alana with tears and sweat soaked into the rough fabric of his folded over coat.

Will stumbles out into smoky half light. He feels brittle, made of glass and rust, held together by string. War, rebellion, rages on, but it seems distant and dreamlike. He’s in a haze. He misses his grandmother’s piano in the sitting room. He misses his dogs. He misses Alana. He wants to brick himself off from each new atrocity, close his eyes and imagine himself on a peaceful river, fishing.

It’s nearly impossible.

The house, a lone survivor in the rubble, much like himself, looms into the street. It’s lost much of its commanding grace, the sockets of its eyes blown out, holes cutting into its form. But it looks safe, whole enough for him to hide in for a day or two, or perhaps find some food. He looks like a stray, he feels like a stray, as he snuffles about the kitchen, rooting in each canister for anything. Anything at all.

He remembers the old man he once saw knock a woman’s porridge from her hands and slurp it off the streets. He feels like that old man.

Noises make him pause, fingers tight around the canister of pickles, his only treasure in the ruins. Will chances a glance from a hole in the kitchen wall and spies two German officers climbing out of their car. He shuffles away with his pickles, steadily onward. He’s weak with hunger, with pain, with fear. The attic looks warm for now, dusty and safe. Far below, he listens to the beginnings of Moonlight Sonata. Each note resonates, makes his fingers twitch and thrum with muscle memory.

He thinks of Alana, watching him now and then in flicks and glances as she wipes down tables and picks up discarded glasses. He plays the piano. It isn’t his grandmother’s, which was sold when things were starting to get truly difficult for them, but it is a noble beast. In the darkness of the attic, trying his hardest not to sneeze, Will’s fingers move as if over ivory keys. The moonlight sonata lulls him to sleep.

He dreams of a stag, silent and watchful, eyes red and gleaming in a misty night and a landscape of looming trees. He dreams of being burnt alive.

Will crawls from his hiding space as dusk rolls over the ruins of the city. The roar of gunfire seems closer still. His knee twinges from strain as he climbs down the ladder, and he bites his lip on a groan of discomfort. The house is silent, and wind whistles through its gaps. He finds a poker and sets the pickles on the mantle, poking delicate holes into the top.

“Hardly the smartest way to go about opening a can.” A voice says in German from behind him. Will gasps and whirls around as quickly as his injuries will allow, and the pickles tumble from the mantle, rolling to the bottom of the stair case. The officer looks back at him, head tilted like a curious bird’s. Will is automatically reminded of a raven.

Or a stag.

“Couldn’t find a can opener.” Will replies. He’s tired. Fear occurs to him, in the face of this Nazi officer. But he can’t run, and he certainly cannot hide. He tries for humour, a grim and morbid smile stretching his lips. “What terrible homeowners, keeping such a poorly stocked kitchen.”

The Nazi officer smiles. “Indeed, you should lodge a complaint.”  They are quiet a beat. Will considers the poker in his hand and wonders how threatening he looks. Apparently enough, because the officer takes a measured step closer, and comes no further. “You’re hungry.” He says, lowly. Will gives a jerky nod. “It would be rude of me to keep you from your meal.” He gives a pointed glance at the pickles at his feet, and Will makes no move to pick them up. “But I am curious. What did you do, before the war?”

“I was a pianist.” Will replies, and keeps his eyes fixed on the shiny emblem on the officer’s hat. His face changes. First wary, then intrigued, then blank.

“A pianist.” He repeats. “A skillful one I hope. Come. Play for me.” He gestures towards the next room. Through the door, Will can see the shadows of a piano. His fingers itch to trail its keys, to feel music vibrate from him, through him. The officer waits in the doorway, and Will reluctantly squeezes passed him. He’s sure he smells like death and dirt and dust. The officer smells of leather, soap and aftershave. “You’ll forgive the imposition. I simply love classical music.”

Will sits gingerly. He hates the officer’s eyes on him, dark and deep and unfathomable. So he closes his eyes, takes a breath, and plays. The notes come tripping over themselves, relayed to keys, angry and eager and fluttering. He releases a tormented sigh as he plays, thinks of Alana in that airless freight train going to her death. Thinks of his dogs, probably half wild now, skin and bones and patches of fur if they’ve managed to survive at all. Thinks of his grandmother’s piano hacked to pieces for fire wood and pennies for one last meal. He mourns as he plays.

The dream of the stag comes back to him, a dark and stormy corner of his mind finally given space to breathe as he purges everything. Every joy and sorrow and empty thought since the moment he and Alana were herded into the ghetto, the moment playing the piano became something he could only do against air, he purges.

“You are a wonder.”

Will hardly notices that he’s stopped at all. His eyes settle somewhere at the officer’s boots, but he doesn’t reply.

“You have a place to hide? I’ll see you settled, taken care of.” The officer gives him an enigmatic smile, and together they climb into the attic, his hand hovering at the small of his back. It makes Will’s skin crawl, that touch that isn’t quite a touch burning his nerves. Will adjusts the ladder when he is safely in the rafters, and doesn’t ask why the officer, the Nazi, is sparing his life. “I’ll come when I can. It is only a shame you won’t be able to play for me again.”

Will gives a shaky nod. The officer smiles and is gone.

Will sleeps mostly. Sometimes he listens to muffled yelling through the floorboards. Sometimes someone plays the piano. Just a note here and there, or a full blown, if somewhat mistake ridden, song. Now that he’s purged all his emotions, he feels empty, a glass waiting to be filled with new thoughts, new fodder for his nightmares. Lying in the little cupboard of the attic, he tries not to think of anything.

But the stag reappears every so often, watching and waiting until it can impale him.

“Are you there?” The officer’s voice is gentle, cajoling him from his hiding space as though he’s a wild animal. With a scraggly beard and ill fitting clothes, Will feels like a wild animal. He peeks cautiously from the cupboard. The officer lifts a package and Will edges closer.  He catches the package as it’s tossed to him. It’s warm and smells divine. “I cannot stay long. Are you well?”

“The mice have welcomed me to the neighbourhood.” Will replies gruffly. He watches the officer smile vaguely beneath his lashes. He peels away the paper. Inside is a loaf of bread, a package of jam, a can opener; at this Will smiles; and a piece of meat that looks suspiciously like liver. “Where’d you manage to find meat? It’s not like there are any butchers open. Or any animals, for that matter.”

The officer smirks deviously. “I have my sources.” Will shrugs, and eats a piece. It’s chewy, salty, flavourful, and more sustenance than he has had in months. He gives a muted groan of pleasure. “I’m glad you enjoy it. I will return soon. Stay quiet.”

The officer returns just as Will is polishing off the last of the bread a week later. “If only you could come down. We could talk face to face like gentleman.” He tosses another package up to Will, and leans against the door frame, watching him eat. Will is reminded of fairy tales where wicked witches fatten children to eat them later. The officer looks at him with the predatory gaze of a cat at a meal not yet consumed. Yet is that operative word that makes Will shiver.

“War time tends to dispense with courtesy.” He says, biting into the hunk of bread and tearing at it.

“If this were another time, I would have you for dinner. You would enjoy my hospitality, a full three course meal, and then play the piano for me at your leisure.”  The officer gives a world weary sigh. “But you are correct. This is war, and we have all lost much. Dignity being least of all.” Will thinks of taking offense to that. The officer’s expression doesn’t allow for it.

“Thank you for the food.” He mumbles instead. The officer grins at him. Its unnerving.

“My pleasure,” he murmurs, and slips through the door like a ghost.

It grows steadily colder. Will curls in rags of blankets he finds scattered about the attic. He thinks of his first winter spent in the ghetto with Alana. How they burned a few of the books to sell in the stove to heat their miniscule apartment and pulled the mattress up beside it, wearing all their clothes and wrapped around each other, listening to their breaths rattling in the dark. He thinks of being a boy, of crunching the crisp ice on river banks with the toe of his boots. Mostly, he dreams of the stag as he drops in and out of a light dozing, black and ominous against a winter landscape. It is a simultaneous terror and comfort. Just as the officer, with his sharp gaze and sharper smile, with his soothing conversation and packages of meat still warm from the pan, are a simultaneous terror and comfort.

He wonders if this is just some type of torture, if he’s keeping him fed and warm and safe to lure him into a false sense of security. He considers running when the house is asleep. But he hurts, and he’s hungry. What difference does it make where he goes?

“You don’t really come off as an army man.” Will says between bites of a juicy piece of steak. He regrets it immediately.

The officer’s head tips just so to regard him with renewed interest. “What makes you say that?”

Will bites his tongue. It’s a shadow over the officer’s shoulder. He looks too clean, too well fed, too altogether satisfied with the destruction around him, as though it couldn’t touch him even if it were a lion roaring in his face. He looks like a vulture, waiting for others to make the kill while he picks off what he can for himself. The officer waits patiently for his answer. “You’re too artistic. None of this, the bombs, the organized killing, has the subtle flair that you prefer.”

The officer acquiesces a nod. Will imagines he sees great antlers bowing with the movement. “You’re rather perceptive.” Is all he says on the matter. He slips through the door, and Will releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Will wakes some days later to the sound of great movement. Tables screech against the floors, things clatter, German soldiers shout orders back and forth. He listens to all this through the floor boards and waits, shaking with cold and anticipation for the officer. The attic door clacks open. Will scrambles down the ladder and meets the officer.

“You’re going?” he asks. 

The officer nods and presses the packages he brought into his hands. Their fingers brush. His hair is mussed beneath his cap, and Will blinks to see his normally so pristine image defaced, as though looking at a vandalized statue of Christ. “We are retreating. The Russians are moving in quickly.” He takes stock of Will’s appearance, and seems to notice for the first time that he is dirty and thin and shaking with cold. He takes off his jacket.

Will stiffens as the officer comes unbearably close, wrapping the great coat around him. His hands rest on his shoulders. Even through the layers of fabric, his hands are too hot on him, searing right through to his bone, as his breath, smelling vaguely of wine, gusts over his cheeks. “You don’t need it?”

“I can always get another.” They stand together like that a long moment, breathing each other’s air. “Your name?”

“Will Graham.” His fingers tighten on the packages. The scent of the coat wafts around him; leather, soap, aftershave.

“It was a pleasure to have you play for me. Will Graham.” His name sounds strange curled on the officer’s tongue just so. “I hope I have the honor of hearing a repeat performance.” Will nods. The officer steps away from him towards the door, and looks him over. He surges forward again, grabs Will by the back of his neck, and presses a hard kiss to his mouth. Will gasps. There’s a scrape of teeth, a wet brush of tongue. “Hannibal Lecter,” he whispers against his mouth. “In case fate keeps us from reuniting.”

Will splutters. Hannibal smiles smugly, and is gone. 


End file.
